Titles by Julie Zando

UH-OH!

UH-OH! is a love story that revolves around the classic text "Story of O." Not an adaptation, it is a critical analysis of masochism that investigates the relationship between love, risk-taking, spirituality, power, and sex. In UH-OH! an all-female cast plays cowboys who stage sadomasochistic rituals in the basement of a diner. A waitress, Oh, played by Emanuela Villorini, falls in love with a cowboy, played by Lower-East Side poet Eileen Myles. Their ensuing love story is told against the backdrop of sexual and spiritual submission. In her investigation of the political, social, and psychological meanings of masochism, Zando appropriates the original text's expose of sado-masochism, while confronting the Freudian basis for cultural feminism's opposition to lesbian sado-masochistic practices. Zando theorizes the possibility of submission as an act of transcendence that splits apart psychic and social boundaries. The tape, like the novel, is a love story which suggests that submission is the ultimate expression of romantic love, and is closely related to the devotional love of mystics.